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Dessert

Seville Orange Marmalade

A preserved citrus preserve made from Seville oranges, lemons, water, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Seville Orange Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Rub the oranges with a clean cloth.

  2. Divide the oranges into quarters without peeling.

  3. Slice the quarters very thinly.

  4. Remove the pips.

Soak

  1. Add 1 quart of water to each pound of sliced fruit.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 24 hours.

Boil and set

  1. Boil the mixture until the peel is tender.

  2. Let the mixture stand until the next day.

  3. Weigh the fruit and water together.

  4. Add 1¼ pounds of loaf sugar for every pound of the mixture.

  5. Boil until the sugar jellies and the peel is transparent, about 45 minutes.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Seville oranges
Their peel and pips supply pectin for setting, and their bitter peel gives the marmalade its character.
Lemons
Add acidity and extra pectin, which help the marmalade set and keep its flavour bright.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, with pectin and acid, helps it set into a jelly.

The step that matters

Boil until the sugar jellies. Setting depends on sugar, pectin and acid reaching the right concentration. Underboiling leaves the marmalade runny, while overboiling makes it stiff and dull in colour.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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